When indexing objects into a search system, a large number of metadata fields may be required. The large number of metadata fields significantly increases the size of a search index. Further, the large number of metadata fields requires complex, intricate and/or multiple search queries to search within the metadata fields of the search index. Accordingly, searching indices with numerous metadata fields is computationally expensive.
Conventional art provides an alias to represent a large number of metadata fields. While the alias implementation may simplify the search query, indices for the related metadata field still exist and are independently searched. Therefore, the additional metadata fields consume memory and/or disk space, and the search performance of the aliases is not efficient because the searches must be performed against each metadata field.
In other embodiments of the conventional art, individual metadata fields are combined into a single field. Because there is only a single combined field instead of the many separate fields, only a single query is needed to search the combined field. As a result, memory and disk space may be saved, and searches may be faster and more efficient. When blending the metadata fields into a single field, however, the metadata values are combined into value storage for the single metadata field. Consequently, the ability to separately extract values for the metadata fields that were combined, or to identify values as being associated with a particular one of these individual metadata fields is lost. Accordingly, a user is not able to search the combined metadata field for values in specific ones of the original fields, or to retrieve values identifiable as being associated with a particular one of the original fields.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a search mechanism that has the benefits of reduced overhead and increased search performance, without sacrificing the ability to identify retrieved metadata values as being associated with specific ones of the original metadata fields.